coffey, a legendary motown producer. >> dennis coffey: we thought he was like the inner city poet, you know, putting his poems to music of what he saw. and it was definitely a very gritty look at what he saw on the streets of detroit. the only writer that i had heard of of that time period was maybe bob dylan, that was writing that well. ♪ ♪ >> simon: coffey co-produced his first album, "cold fact." critics liked it, but it bombed. steve rowland was responsible for his second. it did no better. >> steve rowland: nobody in america had even heard of him. nobody... nobody even was interested in listening to him. how can that be? how can that be? ♪ ♪ >> simon: and how could it be that no one in america knew that rodriguez had become an icon in south africa? steve segerman owns a record store in cape town. >> steve segerman: to many of us south africans, he was the soundtrack to our lives. if you walked into a random white, liberal, middle-class household that had a turntable and a pile of pop records, you would always see "cold fact" by rodriguez. to us, it was one of the most famo